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Summary: Super Book!
Review: Best book I have ever read.I just want to say if you have not read this book yet do it.Its great!
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Summary: I'm so glad I finally read this!
Review: Another Crimson Sky book club special. "The Catcher in the Rye" was not taught at my high school. It was replaced by "The Lord of the Flies" before I started my senior year. No political reasons, we were encouraged to read it, I just never did. Reading this book now in the wake of John Hinkley, Mark Chapman, and the Columbine teens, I searched for insight on why this book appeals to asocial young men. Now I know why. I really enjoyed this novel and I feel it is an important book to read and discuss. This novel is more than just a glimpse of teen angst. It's a look into the alienation, depression, and delusions of an outsider. The funny thing is that Holden has the potential and opportunity to be accepted but his choices and actions keep him back. So the question is, how much of our own angst do we inflict on ourselves? One of many questions, you can take from this book. Definitely recommended for reading. Absolutely recommended for discussion.
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Summary: A very good book about some days in a person's life.
Review: This book was released in 1951, but it doesn't feel aged at all. It feels very real. It is both fun and sometimes almost frightening in its realistic description of human behavior. I think everybody can recognize parts of himself or herself in Holden Caulfield, the main character. This book is quite short and can be read quite quickly, which is good for those who don't read much, but it shouldn't make people who read much avoid it. It is a very good book about some difficult days in a person's life. I really recommend everybody to give it a try. I think you will love it!
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Summary: Enticing, Wonderful, Sincere - Flawed, Riddled, Defeatist.
Review: Hmm... I read this book during my early adolescence while at high school and I was surprised and bewildered and perplexed. I then got involved in reading it for a second time whilst looking out for other works by this writer, the short stories and "Franny and Zooey", I even wrote a class assignment essay about it and later on at the University I put myself through the tortuous task of authoring an overview of J.D. Salinger's work, his main themes and preoccupations. I seem to have misplaced both of them and cannot find them, and I stand as speechless as I did the first time I acquainted myself with the author. What I can say with certainty, is that this novel is Art in every sense, not a character sketch per se, not an alienation novel either, but a work of art that masterfully eludes all criticism in that it cannot be contained in one person's critical viewpoint without having a fundamental element of the book being overlooked and compromised in the process of analysis. My tentative observation, at this point in life, is that it is a prolonged haiku, a meditation on being young, idealistic and confused, a delicately drawn between-the-lines depiction of an uncaring, and hypocritical ("phony") society afflicting the sensitive individual with both its vices and virtues, a starting point for endless adolescent discussion. But I would also like say to all young readers out there to not take this book too seriously, it can be as deadening and nihilistic as it can be sensitizing and sincere. Salinger is very talented writer but he is also deeply uncertain and troublesome, enigmatic as well as poetic, self-defeating in his world view, caring for the world and despising it at the same time, of this world and unable to live in this world or compromise even a minute part of his thoughts for a greater community value, a religion, a philosophical system of thought, a human relation, a cause etc. Good God (and this is only a figure of speech.), that was tiresome. Keep an open mind and doubt mostly everything. Good luck with reading this book.
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Summary: If you are, ever was, or ever will be a teenager...
Review: READ this book!!! I'm a 15 year old young woman and I love this book. I didn't even realize that it was an American classic, banned from the US, or any of that, I just enjoyed the 1st few sentences. Soon I was laughing and enjoying myself for the first time in months. I love characters that I can relate to. It also is very straight foward and hard to put down. I carry it around with me, just in case people ask me about school or anything. I was going through the same exact feelings that Holden is in this book when I read it, and its just a wonderful, crudely humorous novel from the mind of a confused young man. It made me feel so much better to know that someone out there had the same thoughts and feelings as me. (Even though it's a 16 yr. old guy in 1951!)... but even if you're not going through any of the same thing(s) as Holden, just read it, because I'm sure everyone will relate to something in this amazing narrative. Just trust me and go read this if you haven't!
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Summary: The Only Book I Have Ever Enjoyed
Review: The great thing about "The Catcher In The Rye" is it's total lack of metaphors, boring literary device, and hidden meanings. Salinger leaves nothing to interperation, and presents his story of an aggrevated teenager, melancholy and cynical, in a black and white, analylitical fashion. By far the best book I have ever read, it's the only book I ever enjoyed. It's neither too long nor too short, hard to follow or monotonous, serious or comical. Instead, it is a portrait of the perfect novel, cutting through the sugar-coating and "beauty of literature" and getting right to the story and the point: that everything is nothing, and NOTHING is not worth wasting your life on.
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Summary: reminded me why I Iove literatue
Review: I love literature, but it had been awhile since I'd come across a book that truly moved me - that made me stop and think and arrive at a sense of meaning that can't be synthesized in a cliche or a few vague philosophical sentences. This book is amazing. Knowing that it was written during the beat generation of the fifties, I expected the traditional rallying cry against comformity and superficiality and the rest, but "The Catcher in The Rye" goes much further than that. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is an angst-ridden teenage boy who's just been kicked out of a fancy prep school. He's pissed off at all the "phonies" in the world - the people who smile when they don't really mean it, who show off, who use corny expressions or act the way they think they're supposed to act instead of how they want to act. In short, nearly everyone is a phony for Holden. He's definitely got an overly negative view of the world, but readers (especially teenagers such as myself) will identify with him. Holden's experiences in the 3-4 days he spends wandering around NYC (avoiding going home and telling his parents that he's been kicked out of school) allows us to get a feel for how thinks. But the true gem of the book is the end ... this is one of the best "realization" or "character-development" endings I've ever come across. There's this cool quote from some psychoanalyst that Holden is told by some former teacher - "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." That's, like, Holden's epiphany in a nutshell. Except he'd never call it an epiphany. That'd be phony.
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Summary: The Catcher In The Rye by: J.D. Salinger
Review: I thought this book was a very interesting book to read. This is a very good book about a young man going though some tough times in his life. The book takes place during only four days, but in these four days you get to know the main character very well. One of the reasons I thought this was a good book was because I can relate to it because I'm a teenager and the book is about a teenager. You also meet up with a very interesting character whose name is Phoebe. She was my favorite character in the book even though she was only in the book for about the last fifty pages. Everyone I have talked to that read this book shared my opinon that this was a very good book. For this reason I would recomend this book to anyone no matter what age, race, or sex. READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Extraordinary
Review: I thought this book was ok the first time I read it but I really didn't get it, so I read it again. When reading it the second time I realized why The Catcher in the Rye is considered such a great book. It is very realistic and accurate in showing the life of a 16 year old. I found it kind of surprizing that Holden's life in the 1950's is kind of similar for teens now in 2001. The book is about a junior in high school who got kicked out of Pency Prep because of poor grades. He decides he wants to leave the school but he doesn't want to go home so he goes to New York City for a few days. Holden doesn't want to go home because he's afraid of his parent's reaction to him getting kicked out. While in New York Holden gets into some trouble but the whole time he is telling you about his feelings and opinions about things and people he encounters. I love how everything in the book is realistic from the language to the feelings to the situations Holden gets himself into. These are all things teenagers can relate to which is one reason why teens love this book so much. I know I liked it a lot and would recommend it to anyone.
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Summary: Couldn't Put This One Down
Review: I've never even come close to reading this classic by J.D. Salinger until I picked up this cheap little copy a few days ago. My only knowledge of the book came from Mark David Chapman and the killing of John Lennon two decades ago. I sat down with it right away and quickly became engrossed in the story told by narrator and main character Holden Caulfield. It's absolutely incredible that this was written in 1951. The language is slangy and fresh enough to make anyone believe that it was written close to today. The book is an account of a few days in the life of Holden Caulfield, teenager and cynic. Caulfield gets kicked out of his prep school and wanders around New York City for a few days, trying to avoid his parents and having a few interesting encounters along the way. All of these events are related to use directly through Holden's worldview. This worldview is depressingly downbeat, as Holden views most who tramp through this world as "phonies". To use one of Holden's favorite phrases, what "killed me" about this book is Salinger's ability to transform extremely arcane sensations and emotions into prose. When Caulfield talks about his dead brother Allie, he mentions how red his hair was. To show the reader how red it was, Holden talks about a day he was golfing and turned around and saw Allie about 150 yards away watching him. Great imagery! I could actually see his red hair while I was reading this. I loved Caulfield's hunting cap, the imagery of his being the catcher in the rye, and the ducks and frozen fish in Central Park. All point at Caulfield as something deeper than an angst-addled teenager slumming through New York. Caulfield is on a quest to save kids from his own fate. He achieves this in a sense at the end with his kid sister Phoebe. I'm thirty years old, which is still young enough to understand how Holden feels. I went through a stage where I felt exactly like Holden. Everybody does to some extent, I think. The trick is to survive it and not let it destroy you. I really thought this book would end on a bad note, but it seemed uplifting in a way. Read this book, if for nothing else then to say you've read it. Once you get started on this one, you will have a tough time putting it down. Recommended.
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